Virus Danger Faced By Internet Users

Added: 10/31/2007

The facility of internet comes with the most annoying problem which is the virus. A virus danger is so much these days as people are learning how to infect other computers through a virus or website are the main reason of infecting people’s computers. The viruses of computers are so intelligent that they trick a user to open the file, attachment etc to infect the computer. The new users of internet, kids or people with less knowledge of internet can be a victim pretty easily.

Virus is basically derived from a Latin noun meaning ‘toxic’ or ‘poison’. The function of a biological virus is to damage your cells or tissues. The same function is of a computer virus. It damages your files and folders making it vulnerable for other viruses or malware to infect your computer. The virus danger in a computer is that it can copy itself from one computer to another, modify itself and copy itself to the computer without the permission of the user. A computer virus can spread from one computer to another if an infected file or folder is sent to someone else through sharing or internet or carrying it on a removable disk drive like USB, Floppy Drive or CD.

The vast virus danger of computers shows us how vulnerable we are. If a virus is properly developed, it can have destructive effects on million and billions of computers in a day. The virus danger can vary due to the characteristics of a virus. What it does is, it attaches itself with another program, something that is used on a daily basis like Microsoft Office, Messenger or Internet Explorer etc and whenever that particular program is used the virus is activated as well resulting in effecting other programs that were opened at the same time. The virus danger transferred through emails include, some of the email viruses infects the computer just by opening a mail from an unknown person or another common way of getting infected is that when an attachment is opened even sent by a person you know (whose computer is already infected), the file gets downloaded and once you run it your computer gets infected too.

Some of the types of virus danger faced by the internet users are:
Boot Viruses: this kind of virus infect the boot drives like floppy drive or your master hard drive which is responsible for booting the memory in your computer. If you get infected by this virus every time you’re going to boot your computer, the virus will boot as well.
Examples: Stone virus, Disk Killer, Form and Michelangelo

Program viruses: These viruses only infect programs that are run on a daily basis. This way whenever that program is used the virus is activated too, infecting other programs as well.
Examples: Cascade, Sunday

Polymorphic viruses: A virus that can encrypt its code in dissimilar ways so that it comes into view differently in each infection. These viruses are more difficult to detect in a computer
Examples: Involuntary, Stimulate, Cascade, Phoenix, Evil, Proud and Virus 101

Knowing the virus danger one should apply measures to prevent your computer from getting infected.
•A nice anti-virus software protection is the best choice to keep your computer running smoothly. An anti-virus software runs a scan on a daily basis or on the time you have set it on too. The important thing is to keep your software updated as new viruses keep infecting computers on a daily basis.
•You should never download attachments that have an extension of executable files like .EXE, VBS or COM. Though Image extension like GIF are considered to be safe to download but it is now believed that some of the viruses can make their way in the your computer with a JPG file extension which is also an extension for pictures.
•Visit a reliable website for online virus scan like www.trendmicro.com. Run a complete hard drive virus scan.

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